Dental models enable a dentist to understand how a patient's teeth and bite function in a static and/or dynamic relationship.
Dental models can be obtained by taking dental impressions in the patient's oral cavity, including of the patient's dentition and of the surrounding soft tissue. The dental impressions can be used to form casts of the dentition and tissue, which casts provide a form of dental model usable in many dental procedures such as diagnostics, treatment planning, and prosthesis design and fabrication, for example.
Recent advances in dental technology have progressed from conventional techniques, where design and fabrication of dental prostheses take place only in the physical world, to computer-based techniques, where these processes are carried out at least partly in a virtual realm. In the latter, the dental models are digitally reproduced via an imaging process employing imaging apparatus such as a dental model scanner. Based on the digitally reproduced dental models, prosthesis design processes can be carried out at least partly using 3D computer-aided-design (CAD) or other computer design techniques. This can reduce total reliance on the physical dental models in the preparation and testing of prosthesis designs.
One feature of conventional prosthesis design is the articulating together of dental models to reproduce and study the bite of the patient. This is commonly carried out using an articulator that includes an upper jaw plate and a lower jaw plate on which upper and lower dental models are mounted, respectively, and includes a hinge mechanism that replicates the hinge axis of the mandibular condyles.
It is desirable to accurately replicate features of the articulator, with dental models mounted thereon, in a virtual realm.
Any discussion of documents, acts, materials, devices, articles or the like which has been included in the present specification is not to be taken as an admission that any or all of these matters form part of the prior art base or were common general knowledge in the field relevant to the present disclosure as it existed before the priority date of each claim of this application.